This is a note that I posted on facebook a few months ago. Figured I'd put it up on here just for kicks. 🙂
So, I have been struggling a lot these past several months with the sins of my HEART not just my flesh. I have been struggling with those deep rooted sins that overflow from the junk that is within my own heart. I sin from deep within my being, because of the nature of who I am. It is depressing, frustrating and sometimes leaves me feeling hopeless, crying out to God asking Him to just CHANGE me!
We all know that there are certain things about our own character that we are just "stuck" with because of our own blood line and the way we were raised. Many times, God has assured me that I cannot change myself, I cannot just wake up one morning and decide I am going to be patient and then just be patient! That is a ridiculous idea and if I ever think I can do that then I am very decieved. I cannot do anything successfully in my own strength, especially things that have to do with the core of my own character.
The only way these things I wrestle against myself with can be transformed is through alligning myself with Christ – becoming so close to Him and His teachings that HE truly begins to live in and through me, so that I am not reflecting things of myself and my own heredity anymore, but am reflecting Him.
So the real challenge is not a matter of doing some sort of "self-help" project on ourselves, where we, in our own strength, attempt to "fix" ourselves – because these efforts are completely in vain and will never succeed, we will be left completely burnt out. The real challenge when we're struggeling with our own selves is to simply just accept our desperate NEED for Him. I just read something today that said that all the standards He gives us are based on HIS nature! How crazy that was to realize! No wonder all my own efforts fail, the standards were meant to be lived out by Him IN us! This realization brings me to my knees in humility. So I am going to leave whoever decided to read this with the devotional that spurred on this note – be blessed!
The Nature of Regeneration
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this – I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature – His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God's verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God – "… until Christ is formed in you" (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, "Blessed are you…" (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
-"My Utmost for His Highest"
